The first presidential election for millennia is about to be held on Gallifrey. But can even an election restore calm and order?
The first presidential election for millennia is about to be held on Gallifrey. But can even an election restore calm and order?
GALLIFREY: MINDBOMB
I wasn’t happy with “Appropriation,” so discovering that “Mindbomb,” the 13th and penultimate Gallifrey release, followed even more of the same style of political machination did nothing to relieve my unhappiness. Fortunately, this is a Justin Richards script, and Richards has proven himself a master of weaving intricate, interesting plots. The fundamental problems I have with these Gallifreyan political disputes — the rules are made up as they go and it’s entirely unclear what the consequences of Romana’s failure would be — are still present, but Richards bends them in his favor, creating a rule about nullifying previous Presidential actions and then using it to re-introduce Braxiatel to the story. The twists come quickly in the play’s second half, and keep the interest, but ultimately “Mindbomb” is still about Time Lord political minutiae and unconcerned with character or theme. As an example, two plays ago, the Matrix, the ultimate repository of knowledge of the universe’s oldest, most powerful civilization, was destroyed. In “Mindbomb,” another consequence of this stunning event is revealed, something which has surely shaken Time Lord society to its core: the guy that runs the elections has to count the votes by computer, because the Matrix isn’t there to do it for him! My god, I don’t know how they’ll survive.
Let this end, please.
4/10